House of mirrors

Just got back from a trip to Stockholm where we had had an awesome time at a great amusement park: Gröna Lund. It was a roller-coaster bonanza, and luckily I didn't have to deal with my distorted reflection in the house of mirrors.

It's enough that my mirror vision has already gone freaking haywire, and we haven't even hit bathing suit season yet! May was to be my month for "displaying some character", and while I don't feel the need to go all out on a diet, I did vow to take extra care of myself for a period of 31 days and see what, if anything, happened. I skipped temptuous snacks, made a greater effort to eat more healthily, and increased my number of workouts as well as meditation sessions.

The results can be summed up with one word: eh? On the surface nothing has changed. However, I notice I'm becoming more and more selfconscious about my appearance and its supposed deterioration, which I know is crap, but still I'm feeling really mental about it. This is why I neither diet nor do I weigh myself because it takes almost nothing for me to start obsessing about my figure.

I realize I'm heading towards my next phase in life (to put it diplomatically), I just wish there were a handbook that could show me which changes are inevitable, and which ones I can only blame myself for. I remember from an episode of Oprah years ago that Dr. Christiane Northrup (pre-Botox, yikes!) presented her book, "Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom", and I thought, "I'll have to remember that for when I get old!"

Well I guess it's time for a visit to Amazon.com.

Picture from Google.

How about a warm cup of "Shut the hell up"?!

If we're going to allow all of our feelings to come forth on the mat, well at least I won't have to worry about whining frustration not showing up...

Even though tonight's session felt good from the second I got onto the map, and the therapeutic effect was just what I needed after a tough day at work, that nagging voice in the back of my head was truly begging me to open up a soulful can of whoop-ass (to put it mildly).

Here's an excerpt, and might I commend myself for not giving in to my mind's aggravating, passive-agressive comments and "suggestions" (save one):

God, you're just so tired today. Are you sure you want to do this?

I just don't think you're up for getting sweaty.

Maybe you just should write that e-mail reply now (Note that it's 6:45 P.M. and NO ONE is working at this hour!)

Maybe you should just go eat dinner first instead, and maybe you can do this later.

Or you could just do this tomorrow instead. No, wait, you can't, well maybe you can just skip it altogether this week.

Aren't you going to call your family, just so you can check in on them?

I wonder if anyone's written anything interesting on FB within the last 20 minutes?

Oh! A text-message!! Aren't you just going to make sure it's not important? (I did; it wasn't.)

Try as you may, I was onto you tonight. I let you babble on aimlessly while I focused on breathing and how I was feeling on the inside. There I could feel that lump of frustration after a long and tiring day.

Luckily, the pros totally outweighed the cons. Before I knew it, a 75-minute session had passed.

And I felt so incredibly much better for it. Now I'm going to tune in to BBC's "Property Ladder"!

Picture from Google and title shamelessly stolen from Ben Stiller's sadistic orderlie in "Happy Gilmore"!

Being Confusedcius

A Facebook group titled "Åttaveckors meditation" (8 weeks of meditation) has inspired me to start meditating on a (nearly) daily basis. For that, I'm grateful.

I'm also in the midst of reading Sally Kempton's Meditation for the Love of It in an effort to take my meditation to a deeper level. It all sounds so nice in the beginning, things like: There's no such thing as a bad meditation along with other incitements meant to ease the nervous novice.

Then certain ground rules are laid: Meditation requires discipline, and in order to go beyond the first pleasures of relaxation and move closer towards the Self, one must have a clear ambition to journey inward. "OK," I think to myself, "That makes sense..." I try some of the exercises and realize that this kind of meditation isn't as easy (at least for now) as the mindfullness exercises I've tested.

In the following chapter (that I'm in the process of reading) the suggestions start: create a sacred place (perhaps with a raised altar), meditate at the same time each day, cleanse yourself first, wear the same (washed) clothes, and so on. I know this is what Patanjali had written in his Yoga Sutras, but that was another era to say the least. This is when I start to wonder, "Whatever happened to 'meditating is as easy and accessible as breathing itself'?"

While meditation isn't about religion, the element of faith is unavoidable since one has to believe in the Self in order to bring some meaning to this practice. Yet my Western mind reminds me that if I'm not critical to my readings, I'm basically a sitting duck begging to be brainwashed.

So with furrowed brow I try to figure out what leg to stand on: Go back and stick with simpler feel-good exercises and see what happens? Or raise the bar, follow the suggestions, and hope I'm not making a fool out of myself?

But, wait! I live in Sweden - the mecca of the middleground!!

I come to realize that I can try deepening my practice with Kempton's techniques whether I follow the suggested routines or not. I've decided to interpret the suggested routines not as mandatory, but rather as well-intended advice that may pave a more focused way towards seeing my Self.